Jane of Lantern Hill (16 page)

“She will soon forget everything about Lantern Hill,” said grandmother.

Mother wasn't so sure. She felt the change in Jane, as did everybody. Uncle David's family thought Jane “much improved.” Aunt Sylvia said Victoria had actually become able to get through a room without danger to the furniture. And Phyllis was a shade less patronizing, though with plenty of room for improvement yet.

“I heard you went barefoot down there,” she said curiously.

“Of course,” said Jane. “All the children do in summer.”

“Victoria has gone quite P. E. Island,” said grandmother with her bitter little smile, much as if she had said, “Victoria has gone quite savage.” Grandmother had already learned a new way to get under Jane's skin. It was to say little biting things about the Island. Grandmother employed it quite mercilessly. She felt that Jane, in so many respects, had somehow slipped beyond her power to hurt. All the color still went out of Jane in grandmother's presence but she was not thereby reduced to the old flabbiness. Jane had not been chatelaine of Lantern Hill and the companion of a keen, mature intellect all summer for nothing. A new spirit looked out of her hazel eyes…something that was free and aloof…something that was almost beyond grandmother's power to tame or hurt. All the venom of her stings seemed unable to touch this new Jane…except when she sneered at the Island.

Because in a very real sense Jane was still living on the Island. This helped to take the edge off her first two weeks of unbearable homesickness. While she was practicing her scales she was listening for the thunder of the breakers on Queen's Shore; while she ate her meals she was waiting for dad to come in from one of his long hikes with Happy trotting at his heels; when she was alone in the big gloomy house she was companioned by the Peters…who could have imagined that a couple of cats a thousand miles away could be such comforts?…when she lay awake at night she was hearing all the sounds of her Island home. And while she was reading the Bible chapter to grandmother and Aunt Gertrude in that terrible, unchanged drawing-room, she was reading it to dad on the old Watch Tower.

“I should prefer a little more
reverence
in reading the Bible, Victoria,” said grandmother. Jane had been reading an old Hebrew war tale as father would have read it, with a trumpet clang of victory in her voice. Grandmother looked at her vindictively. It was plain that reading the Bible was no longer a penance to Jane. She seemed positively to enjoy it. And what could grandmother do about it?

Jane had made a list of the months that must pass before her return to the Island on the back of her arithmetic notebook and smiled when she ticked off September.

She had felt very reluctant to go back to St. Agatha's. But in a short time she found herself saying one day in amazement, “I
like
going to school.”

She had always felt vaguely left out…excluded…at St. Agatha's. Now, for some reason unknown to her, she no longer felt so. It was as if she had become a comrade and a leader overnight. The girls of her class looked up to her. The teachers began to wonder why they had never before suspected what a remarkable child Victoria Stuart was. Why, she was simply full of executive ability.

And her studies were no longer a tribulation. They had become a pleasure. She
wanted
to study as hard as she could, to catch up with dad. Dim ghosts of history…exquisite, unhappy queens…grim old tyrants…had become real…marked poems in the reader she and dad had read together were full of meaning for her…the ancient lands where they had roamed in fancy were places she knew and loved. It was so easy to learn about them. Jane brought home no more bad reports. Mother was delighted but grandmother did not seem overly pleased. She picked up a letter one day which Jane was writing to Polly Jimmy John, glanced over it, dropped it with disdain.

“Phlox is not spelled f-l-o-x, Victoria. But I suppose it does not matter to your haphazard friends how you spell.”

Jane blushed. She knew perfectly well how to spell phlox but there was so much to tell Polly…to ask Polly…so many messages to send to the people in that far, dear Island by the sea…she just scribbled away furiously without thinking.

“Polly Garland is the best speller at Lantern Corners school,” said Jane.

“Oh, I have no doubt…no doubt whatever…that she has all the backwoods virtues,” said grandmother

Grandmother's sneers could not poison Jane's delight in the letters she got from the Island. They came as thick as autumn leaves in Vallambroso. Somebody at Lantern Hill or Hungry Cove or the Corners was always writing to Jane. The Snowbeams sent composite letters, dreadfully spelled and blotted, written paragraph about. They possessed the knack of writing the most amusing things, illustrated along the edges with surprisingly well-done thumbnail sketches by Shingle. Jane always wanted to shriek with laughter over the Snowbeam letters.

Elder Tommy had the mumps…fancy Elder Tommy with the mumps…Shingle had fancied it in a few sidesplitting curves…The tail-board of Big Donald's cart had come out when he was going up Little Donald's hill and all his turnips had rolled out and down the hill and was he mad! The pigs had got into the Corners graveyard; Min's ma was making a silk quilt…Jane immediately began saving patches for Min's ma's quilt…Ding-dong's dog had torn the whole seat out of Andy Pearson's second best trousers, the frost had killed all the dahlias, Step-a-yard was having boils, there had been a lovely lot of funerals this fall, old Mrs. Dougald MacKay had died and people who were at the funeral said she looked perfectly gorgeous, the Jimmy Johns' baby had laughed at last, the big tree on Big Donald's hill had blown down…Jane was sorry for that, she had loved that tree…“we miss you just awful, Jane”…“Oh Jane, we wish you could be here for Hallowe'en night.”

Jane wished it too. If one could but fly in the darkness over rivers and mountains and forests to the Island for just that one night! What fun they would have running round putting turnip and pumpkin Jack-o'-lanterns on gateposts and perhaps helping to carry off somebody's gate.

“What are you laughing at, darling?” asked mother.

“A letter from home,” said Jane thoughtlessly.

“Oh, Jane Victoria, isn't this your home?” cried mother piteously.

Jane was sorry she had spoken. But she had to be honest. Home! A little house looking seaward…a white gull…ships going up and down…spruce woods…misty barrens…salt air cold from leagues of gulf…quiet…silence.
That
was home…the only home she knew. But she hated to hurt mother. Jane had begun to feel curiously protective about mother…as if, somehow, she must be shielded and guarded. Oh, if she could only talk things over with her mother…tell her everything about dad…find out everything. What fun it would be to read those letters to mother! She did read them to Jody. Jody was as much interested in the Lantern Hill folks as Jane herself. She began sending messages to Polly and Shingle and Min.

The elms around 60 Gay turned a rusty yellow. Far away the red leaves would be falling from the maples…the autumn mists would be coming in from the sea. Jane opened her notebook and ticked off October.

November was a dark, dry, windy month. Jane scored a secret triumph over grandmother one week of it.

“Let me make the croquettes for lunch, Mary,” she begged one day. Mary consented very skeptically, remembering that there was plenty of chicken salad in the refrigerator if the croquettes were ruined. They were not. They were everything croquettes should be. Nobody knew who had made them, but Jane had the fun of watching folks eat them. Grandmother took a second helping.

“Mary seems to have learned how to make croquettes properly at last,” she said.

Jane wore a poppy on Armistice Day because dad was a D.S. She was hungry to hear about him but she would not ask her Island correspondents. They must not know she and dad did not exchange letters. But sometimes there was a bit about him in some of the letters…perhaps only a sentence or two. She lived for and by them. She got up in the night to reread the letters they were in. And every Saturday afternoon she shut herself up in her room and wrote him a letter which she sealed up and asked Mary to hide in her trunk. She would take them all to dad next summer and let him read them while she read his diary. She made a little ritual of dressing up to write to dad. It was delightful to be writing to him, while the wind howled outside, to father so far away and yet so near, telling him everything you had done that week, all the little intimate things you loved.

The first snow came one afternoon as she wrote, in flakes as large as butterflies. Would it be snowing on the Island? Jane hunted up the morning paper and looked to see what the weather report in the Maritimes was. Yes…cold, with showers of snow…clearing and cold at night. Jane shut her eyes and saw it. Great soft flakes falling over the gray landscape against the dark spruces…her little garden a thing of fairy beauty…egg flakes in the empty robin's nest she and Shingle knew of…the dark sea around the white land. “Clearing and cold at night.” Frosty stars gleaming out in still frostier evening blue over quiet fields thinly white with snow. Would dad remember to let the Peters in?

Jane ticked off November.

Christmas had never meant a great deal to Jane. They always did the same things in the same way. There were neither tree nor stockings at 60 Gay and no morning celebration because grandmother so decreed. She said she liked a quiet forenoon and she always went to the service at St. Barnabas', though, for some queer reason of her own, she always wanted to go alone that day. Then they all went for lunch to Uncle William's or Uncle David's and there was a big family dinner at night at 60 Gay, with the presents on display. Jane always got a good many things she didn't want especially and one or two she did. Mother always seemed even a little gayer on Christmas than on any other day…too gay, as if, Jane in her new wisdom felt, she were afraid of remembering something if she stopped being gay for a moment.

But the Christmas season this year had a subtle meaning for Jane it had never possessed before. There was the concert at St. Agatha's for one thing, in which Jane was one of the star performers. She recited another
habitant
poem and did it capitally…because she was reciting to an audience of one a thousand miles away and didn't care a hoot for grandmother's scornful face and compressed lips. The last number was a tableau in which four girls represented the spirits of the four seasons kneeling around the Christmas spirit. Jane was the spirit of autumn, with maple leaves in her russet hair.

“Your granddaughter is going to be a very handsome girl,” a lady told grandmother. “She doesn't resemble her lovely mother, of course, but there is something very striking about her face.”

“Handsome is as handsome does,” said grandmother in a tone which implied that, judged by that standard, Jane hadn't the remotest chance of good looks. But Jane didn't hear it and wouldn't have cared if she had. She knew what dad thought about her bones.

Jane could not send presents to the Island…she had no money to buy them. An allowance was something Jane had never had. So she wrote a special letter to all her friends instead. They sent her little gifts which gave her far more delight than the fine ones she got in Toronto.

Min's ma sent her a packet of summer savory.

“Nobody here cares for summer savory,” said grandmother, meaning that she didn't. “We prefer sage.”

“Mrs. Jimmy John always uses savory in her stuffing and so do Min's ma and Mrs. Big Donald,” said Jane.

“Oh, no doubt we are sadly behind the times,” said grandmother, and when Jane opened the packet of spruce-gum Young John had sent her, grandmother said, “Well, well, so
ladies
chew gum nowadays. Other times, other manners.”

She picked up the card Ding-dong had sent Jane. It had on it the picture of a blue and gold angel under which Ding-dong had written, “This looks like you.”

“I have always heard,” said grandmother, “that love is blind.”

Grandmother certainly had the knack of making you feel ridiculous.

But even grandmother did not disdain the bundle of driftwood old Timothy Salt expressed up. She let Jane burn it in the fireplace on Christmas eve, and mother loved the blue and green and purple flames. Jane sat before it and dreamed. It was a very cold night…a night of frost and stars. Would it be as cold on the Island and would her geraniums freeze? Would there be a thick white fur on the windows at Lantern Hill? What kind of a Christmas would dad have? She knew he was going to Aunt Irene's for dinner. Aunt Irene had written Jane a note to accompany her gift of a very pretty knitted sweater and told her so. “With a few of his old friends,” said Aunt Irene.

Would Lilian Morrow be among the old friends? Somehow Jane hoped not. There was always a queer little formless, nameless fear in her heart when she thought of Lilian Morrow and her caressing “'Drew.”

Lantern Hill would be empty on Christmas. Jane resented that. Dad would take Happy with him and the poor Peters would be all alone.

Jane had one thrill on Christmas Day nobody knew anything about. They went to lunch at Uncle David's and there was a copy of
Saturday
Evening
in the library. Jane pounced on it. Would there be anything of dad's in it? Yes, there was. Another front page article on
The
Consequences
of
Confederation
in
Regard
to
the
Maritime
Provinces.
Jane was totally out of her depth in it, but she read every word of it with pride and delight.

Then came the cat.

They had had dinner at 60 Gay and were all in the big drawing room, which even with a fire blazing on the hearth still seemed cold and grim. Frank came in with a basket.

“It's come, Mrs. Kennedy,” he said.

Grandmother took the basket from Frank and opened it. A magnificent white Persian cat was revealed, blinking pale green eyes disdainfully and distrustfully at everybody. Mary and Frank had discussed that cat in the kitchen.

“Whatever has the old dame got into her noddle now?” said Frank. “I thought she hated cats and wouldn't let Miss Victoria have one on any consideration. And here she's giving her one…and it costing seventy-five dollars. Seventy-five dollars for a cat!”

“Money's no object to her,” said Mary. “And I'll tell you what's in her noddle. I haven't cooked for her for twenty years without learning to read her mind. Miss Victoria has a cat on that Island of hers. Her grandmother wants to cut that cat out. She isn't going to have Andrew Stuart letting Miss Victoria have cats when she isn't allowed to have them here. The old lady is at her wits' end how to wean Miss Victoria away from the Island and that's what this cat means. Thinks she…a real Persian, costing seventy-five dollars and looking like the King of All Cats, will soon put the child out of conceit with her miserable common kittens. Look at the presents she give Miss Victoria this Christmas. As if to say, ‘You couldn't get anything like
that
from your father!' Oh, I'm knowing her. But she's met her match at last, or I'm mistaken. She can't overcrow Miss Victoria any longer and she's just beginning to find it out.”

“This is a Christmas present for you, Victoria,” said grandmother. “It should have been here last night but there was some delay…somebody was ill.”

Everybody looked at Jane as if they expected her to go into spasms of delight.

“Thank you, grandmother,” said Jane flatly.

She didn't like Persian cats. Aunt Minnie had one…pedigreed smoke-blue…and Jane had never liked it. Persian cats were so deceptive. They looked so fat and fluffy, and then when you picked them up, expecting to enjoy a good satisfying squeeze, there was nothing to them but bones. Anybody was welcome to their Persian cat for all of Jane.

“Its name is Snowball,” said Grandmother.

So she couldn't even name her own cat. But grandmother expected her to like the cat and Jane went to work heroically in the following days trying to like it. The trouble was, the cat didn't want to be liked. No friendliness ever warmed the pale green fire of its eyes. It did not want to be petted or caressed. The Peters had been lapsters, with eyes of amber, and Jane from the first had been able to talk to them in their own language. But Snowball refused to understand a word she said.

“I thought…correct me if I'm wrong…that you professed to be fond of cats,” said grandmother.

“Snowball doesn't like me,” said Jane.

“Oh!” said grandmother. “Well, I suppose your taste in cats is on a par with your taste in friends. And I don't suppose there is very much that can be done about it.”

“Darling,
couldn't
you like Snowball a little more?” pleaded mother, as soon as they were alone. “Just to please your grandmother. She thought you would be delighted. Can't you
pretend
to like it?”

Jane was not very good at pretending. She looked after Snowball faithfully, combed and brushed him every day, saw that he had the right kind of food and plenty of it, saw that he did not get out in the cold and take pneumonia…would not have cared in the least if he had. She liked pussies who went out boldly on their own mysterious errands and later appeared on the doorstep pleading to get in where there was a warm cushion and a drop of cream. Snowball took all her attention as a matter of course, paraded about 60 Gay, waving a plumy tail, and was rapturously adored by all callers.

“Poor Snowball,” said grandmother ironically.

At this unlucky point Jane giggled. She couldn't help it. Snowball looked so little desirous of pity. Sitting on the arm of the chesterfield, he was monarch of all he surveyed and quite happy about it.

“I like a cat I can hug,” said Jane. “A cat that likes to be hugged.”

“You forget you are talking to
me,
not to Jody,” said grandmother.

After three weeks Snowball disappeared. Luckily Jane was at St. Agatha's or grandmother might have suspected her of conniving at his disappearance. Everybody was away and Mary had left the front door open for a few moments. Snowball went out and apparently wandered into the fourth dimension. A lost-and-found ad had no results.

“He's been stole,” said Frank. “That's what comes of having them expensive cats.”

“It's not me that's sorry. He had to be more pampered than a baby,” said Mary. “And I'm not of the opinion Miss Victoria will break her heart about it either. She's still hankering after her Peters…she's not one to change, and the old lady can put that in her pipe and smoke it.”

Jane couldn't pretend any great grief and grandmother was very angry. She smoldered for days over it and Jane was uncomfortable. Perhaps she had been ungrateful…perhaps she hadn't tried hard enough to like Snowball. Anyhow, on the night the big white Persian suddenly materialized on the street corner, as she and mother were waiting for the Bloor car amid a swirl of snow, and wrapped itself around her legs in an apparent frenzy of recognition and hoarse meows, Jane yelped with genuine delight.

“Mummy…mummy…here's Snowball.”

That she and mother should be standing alone on a street corner, waiting for a car on a blustery January night was an unprecedented thing. There had been doings at St. Agatha's that night…the Senior girls had put on a play and mother had been invited. Frank was laid up with influenza and they had to go with Mrs. Austen. Before the play was half through Mrs. Austen had been summoned home because of sudden illness in her family and mother had said, “Don't think of us for a moment. Jane and I can go home perfectly well on the streetcars.”

Jane always loved a ride on a streetcar, and it was twice as much fun with mother. It was so seldom she and mother went anywhere alone. But when they did, mother was such a good companion. She saw the funny side of everything and her eyes laughed to Jane's when a joke popped its head up. Jane was sorry when they got off at Bloor, for that meant they were comparatively near home.

“Darling, how can this be Snowball?” exclaimed mother. “It does look like him, I admit…but it's a mile from home…”

“Frank always said he'd been stolen, mummy. It must be Snowball…a strange cat wouldn't make a fuss over me like this…”

“I shouldn't have thought Snowball would either,” laughed mother.

“I expect he's glad to see a friend,” said Jane. “We don't know how he's been treated. He feels awfully thin. We must take him home.”

“On the street car…”

“We can't leave him here. I'll hold him…he'll be quiet.”

Snowball was quiet for a few moments after they entered the car. There were not many people on it. Three boys at the far end sniggered as Jane sat down with her armful of cat. A pudgy child edged away from her in terror. A man with a pimply face scowled at her as if he were personally insulted by the sight of a Persian cat.

Suddenly Snowball seemed to go quite mad. He made one wild leap out of Jane's incautiously relaxed arms and went whizzing around the car, hurtling over the seats and hurling himself against the windows. Women shrieked. The pudgy child bounced up and screamed. The pimply-faced man's hat got knocked off by a wild Snowballian leap, and he swore. The conductor opened the door.

“Don't let the cat out,” shrieked breathless, pursuing Jane. “Shut the door…shut it quick…it's my lost cat and I'm taking it home.”

“You'd better keep hold of it then,” said the conductor gruffly.

“Enough is as good as a feast,” thought Snowball…evidently…for he allowed Jane to nab him. The boys all laughed insultingly as Jane walked back to her seat, looking neither to the right nor to the left. A button had burst off her slipper and she had stumbled and skinned her nose on the handle of a seat. But she was Jane victorious…as well as Victoria.

“Oh, darling…darling,” said mother, in kinks of laughter…real laughter. When had mother laughed like that? If grandmother saw her!

“That's a dangerous animal,” said the pimply-faced man warningly.

Jane looked at the boys. They made irresistibly comic faces at her and she made faces back. She liked Snowball better than she ever had before. But she did not relax her grip on him until she heard the door of 60 Gay clang behind her.

“We've found Snowball, grandmother,” cried Jane triumphantly. “We've brought him home.”

She released the cat who stood looking squiffily about.

“That
is not Snowball,” said grandmother. “That is a female cat.”

Judging from grandmother's tone it was evident that there was something very disgraceful about a female cat!

The owner of the female cat was eventually discovered through another lost-and-found and no more Persians appeared at 60 Gay. Jane had ticked off December, and January was speeding away. The Lantern Hill news was still absorbing. Everybody was skating…on the pond or on the little round, tree-shadowed pool beyond the Corners…Shingle Snowbeam had been queen in a Christmas concert and had worn a crown of scalloped tin; the new minister's wife could play the organ; the Jimmy John baby had eaten all the blooms off Mrs. Jimmy John's Christmas cactus, every last one of them; Mrs. Little Donald had had her gobbler for Christmas dinner…Jane remembered that magnificent white gobbler with the coral-red wattles and accorded him a meed of regret; Uncle Tombstone had butchered Min's ma's pig and Min's ma had sent a roast to dad; Min's ma had got a new pig to bring up, a nice pink pig exactly like Elder Tommy; Mr. Spragg's dog at the Corners had bit the eye out of Mr. Loney's dog and Mr. Loney was going to law about it; Mrs. Angus Scatterby, whose husband had died in October, was disappointed over the result. “It's not so much fun being a widow as I expected,” she was reported to have said; Sherwood Morton had gone into the choir and the managers had put a few more nails in the roof…Jane suspected Step-a-yard of that joke; there was wonderful coasting on Big Donald's hill; her dad had got a new dog, a fat white dog named Bubbles; her geraniums were blooming beautiful…“and me too far away to see them,” thought Jane with a pang; William MacAllister had had a fight with Thomas Crowder because Thomas told William he didn't like the whiskers William would have had if he had had whiskers; they had had a silver thaw…Jane could see it…ice jewels…the maple wood a thing of unearthly splendor…every stalk sticking up from the crusted snow of the garden a spear of crystal; Step-a-yard was mudding…what on earth was mudding?…she must find out next summer; Mr. Snowbeam's pig-house roof had blown off…“if he'd nailed the ridge-pole firmly on last summer when I advised him to, this wouldn't have happened,” thought Jane virtuously; Bob Woods had fallen on his dog and sprained his back…was it Bob's back or the dog's that was sprained?…Caraway Snowbeam had to have her tonsils out and was putting on such airs about it; Jabez Gibbs had set a trap for a skunk and caught his own cat; Uncle Tombstone had given all his friends an oyster supper; some said Mrs. Alec Carson at the Corners had a new baby, some said she hadn't.

What had 60 Gay to offer against the color and flavor of news like that? Jane ticked January off.

February was stormy. Jane spent many a blustery evening, while the wind howled up and down Gay Street, poring over seed catalogs, picking out things for dad to plant in the spring. She loved to read the description of the vegetables and imagine she saw rows of them at Lantern Hill. She copied down all Mary's best recipes to make them for dad next summer…dad who was likely at this very moment to be sitting cozily by their own fireside with two happy dogs curled up at his feet and outside a wild white night of drifting snow. Jane ticked off February.